Desi Scotch

A lot has happened since last i wrote, Anna’s party disintegrated (as if we actually expected something worthwhile to happen), Australia has agreed to sell us Uranium, Indian Rupee is at all time low, India got raped in England, the 2G scamsters got bailed and we finally had the ‘million dollar baby’ on Nov 16. What has not happened is the elusive century of the God. Blogging is like an erection, once you procrastinate it due to any reason whatsoever, the zeal kind of dies and the more often you do the stronger the subsequent excitation is required. So it was kind of fitting that the blog has come after me viewing the Dirty Picture. I never thought that the movie could affect me 2.5 feet above from where i actually expected it to. If you can survive the embarrassing first half then you are in for a post ‘on the rocks Chivas’ feel. My city is not small by any means yet somehow this movie was released in a movie theatre usually reserved for educative movies. FYI for those who have never been into one of these movie theatres, these are very clean and odourless. The comments however reeked of previous experiences of the people out there. Not that i mind these comments usually but just that i had started to like the movie. If you remove the silken covering what blossoms is a very rare treat, seldom are such strong and innovative women centred movies made. It reminded me somewhat of Fashion but this one was definitely better owing to its non clichéd unhappy ending. The contamination of innocence into a sadist and cynic practicality here was stronger than any contemporary movie. It was surprising to find out that there could be people who can dare to go against such a strong tide. Silk actually made us think that right-wrong, correct-incorrect and moral-immoral are a matter of perception rather than a clear demarcation indicating them. Naseeruddin Shah was phenomenal as usual, his chemistry with Vidya Balan was evident in all the cheesy jokes which incinerated the whole movie hall. With his rapidly advancing age it was implicit that this much exertion might render Naseeruddin Shah dead but he defied all i guess.  The role of Tushar Kapoor was that of a brainless and spineless guy which he did to perfection.  I personally never thought that in a movie involving Emraan Hashmi i would ever see someone else being the bed time star. The random naive guy who was told that he could buy off Silk in 100 rs was one of the many touches of simplicity in the otherwise materialUstic a world portrayed. All in all the movie has something for everyone- the critics, the perverts and the enthusiasts.

**dedicated to all the flavours of 1 rupee which was spent for Silk by the ‘random’ guy :-P

The Bearded Usain Bolt - Baba Ramdev

To all the lesser mortals, Baba was not running and panting it was a nationwide release of a new asana, kapalabhati on the move. Well with all due respect to Baba the UPA actually did make Baba discover some new dimensions. It provided him with a rare opportunity to try out a non-saffron coloured ‘dress’ also Baba with all the Yogasanas will obviously have a lot of time to spend on earth and hence has never been seen in hurry till now, good work UPA.

Kapil Sibal the successor of our dearest HRD minister Arjun Singh went through all the hardships viz- chartered jet, five star hotel, press coverage, to appease Baba but to no avail, he proved quite adamant. That was one mistake however which Baba committed, he took it as a Dogfight while it should have been taken as Dogfighting instead. Lokpal Bill where it all started has taken the pillion seat it seems but nonetheless the agitation of the Delhi police did cement the friendship between Baba & Anna. Although looking at Anna’s advanced age i suppose Anna himself would have realised that he would require the friendship of Baba to be chirayu. They say Great men make great mistakes and they also say Boys become men only after committing mistakes, well it seems either our turbanator is on his way to greatness or becoming a man, politically. With the backfiring decision of lathi charge on the Baba brigade the Great Indian PM Pizza has just started being baked desi bereft of any Italian Dressing in it.

The verbose Digvijay Singh has raised his gold laden finger on Baba being over qualified for a sanyasi and called him a businessman. It has been made to look as if the fight for the Lokpal Bill and the return of Black Money is a part of Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) of Baba’s empire. The patanjali Yoga peeth is being questioned for their assets while so many fellow comrades of Diggy Raja are under question. The CBI enquiry of the trust is more of a school boy revenge rather than an issue of national importance.  Even if such is the case the CSR did give the UPA a run for their money and to Switzerland at that. We might in future see the bi party system in India, the Democratic Anna Party and the Ramdev Republican Party, who will u vote???
    

The Smoothest Move Ever

Well it has been three weeks since i came to this place with the overhead oven, i refer the sun here only to underline the heat so no colourful thoughts please. Although the transformation took a bit of time but now i have adopted the colours of the place well. They say don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time well i got to know of this way after i had taken the only tangible step to becoming an engineer, IIT-JEE, any way we’ll skip the unpleasantaries here.

So there i was in Inox for some tantalising pleasures to my gluttony and to my eyes. And then i saw them sitting pretty like tiny specks of vanilla in Belgian chocolate (flavours only please). A look was enough to tell me that the guy was an I-Banker, earns big money, had a joint family and yes, a north Indian. Well even on a weekend he had his Bluetooth head set on enough to tell that the guy could be one of those being grilled big time by bigger firms for even bigger money. No two (out of 4) of his family members looked like they can be put together on a two-wheeler implies big money. North Indian was obvious and i’ll get to the joint family in just a while. Since my action movie was not for another 45 minutes compounded with the sadly persistent fact that i was alone, i decided to watch this family movie. Well i went and sat at the table just opposite to them and it was then when i saw something which rendered me with the only option of sitting down and crossing my legs to avoid the embarrassment. The uncle must have had a tough week in the office and i guess for the whole week bed only proved for him to be a sleeping place. Any way an insect sat on the auntie’s shoulder, the uncle seized it, the mosquito as well as the opportunity. The tiny thing demanded only a second’s attention but time stood frozen for uncle it seemed. I guess at that moment we both were admiring the fact that auntie had been endowed a bit too amply by the almighty. Well with a move that was too smooth to be humanly possible, his hand slid all the way down from her shoulder to her side and finally found solace in her lap. It would have been morally wrong for me to sit there for any longer and hence i got up to leave immediately. I couldn’t help but to smile on the fact that the children would have a hard time to sleep peacefully that night...

**the joint family thing was more of an intuition than reasoning.

A Quiet Hangover

First of all neither is this a post-another-beautiful-gal-broke-my-heart-up post nor is this a the-morning-after-heavy-booze-in-the-night write-up, so all near and dear please think straight. As a matter of fact this one which i am enduring right now is more sinister than the two mentioned above. The first one has a remedy ‘to move on’, yes this is what your friends and sisters say after your heart tissues have been stretched beyond their elastic limit, also the fabled ‘you deserve a better one’ and tell u what it kind of workS. Yes that ‘S’ instead of ‘ed’ was mournfully deliberate. The second one has a remedy ‘to go on’ drinking water, actually the physiological condition during a hang over is same as during dying of drought, hence the water the rescuer. This one has absolutely no practical cure. Enough of what this hangover is not and we’ll start with what it is. Yesterday i had one of the best meals in my life in the mess of an engineering college!!! Impossibly insane as it might be, yet it did happen with me. Neither was i served Caviar nor was i sharing the table with any Victoria’s Secret Model but i had an opportunity to open my mouth for some reason which was different from eating rice. I hadn’t uttered a word for the past one week during my lunch. No, nobody has got the better of me in wits but with my knowledge of South India limited only till the word Rajnikanth i was bound to have this problem. The reality struck me all the more severely after 24 full hours of Hindi speaking and abusing and eating. For most of our lives we are taught by ‘cool’ people to ignore what others are saying and carrying on, well i am just being taught this practically.

**dedicated to swapnil, dhingra, IIIT Hyderabad

Spoons

Akka(Didi) ho gaya. I am done Akka, i have had enough...She so very sweetly put some more RICE in my plate after hearing something she didn’t understand and i started with the rice after hearing something which i didn’t understand. All this happened with smiles all around. This is an altogether a new situation for me, not the not understanding part, no, i have had enough vivas for this where i don’t understand what is being asked of me and when i answer the prof doesn’t understand what is being told to him and mind you only the prof is stupid, what is new is the mutual smiling. I have never been pampered so much in my life neither at home nor away as i m done here. After every morsel i am asked- how is the food, did u like it??? With smile on their faces and sparks in their eyes, these people are indeed very proud on their culture, which i am sorry to admit but we north Indians lack. Neway my answer is always the same, nice, delicious, tasty, new. And don’t think that the answer is out of fear of being pulverised by my friends and co-interns but the food actually is nice here. After being famished on the mess food for two years with the same taste (bad taste) and the same smell (the MESS smell) i can very well appreciate the spices’ aroma and taste in the food here. The weather is nice and the people are nicer. I haven’t paid for my lunch for the past three days straight!!! The confusion which i face after bath as to me being wet due to water or sweat is ofcourse a small price to pay for all these incentives. The fabled old Hyderabad still seems to be a weekend away from me though. Never ever have i enjoyed more working as much as i do here in my intern, integration and enthalpy calculation was never more fun. Next time i meet you i bet i can explain all what u wanna ask through sign language which is very rapidly becoming my third fluent language.

This land where restaurants are called as Tiffin Centres and where people love to make toung twisters out of their names and put extra ‘H’ in them has just started feeling home.

**dedicated to my flight to Hyderabad in which i drank atleast 4 glasses of water and learned that the air hostesses go alternate when summoned ;-) :-P

The Last Good

Fair, Good, Very Good, Excellent...No, m not talking about rating girls out here, infact m talking about women, elderly women at that. You may be but i certainly m not a pervert so stop thinking in that direction. Neway back to the point to all those women who have taught me when i was in school. Remember we all must have come across teachers with different copy correcting abilities some always wrote 'Good' after correcting every chapter, some wrote 'Fair' and so on. They were the nice teachers, the always smiling ones, the chilled out ones as we used to call them then and there were those who were vicious with their pen, red marks all over the note book, encircling the spelling mistakes, underlining the whole sentence for the grammatical errors quite not unlike the modern day MS Word. These teachers, the evil ones, the sulkers as they were called they gave 'Good' once or twice in an year. And it was a matter of extreme pride for any of us to have that in our note books. That 'Good' was usually the deciding argument in any fights when we used to measure each other's 'strengths'. If you ever noticed the general notebooks of that subject in the class used to be a lot more neat & clean in comparison to others.

We received our last 'Good' when we were in class IX after that teachers stopped giving us 'Good', now i don't know whether our and especially my results dropped due to the lack of 'Good' or it was the other way round. After coming to college i have seen a lot many of our profs don't appear as if they care about us which of course is not their job yet i do feel that a few Goods can do a lot of good to the junta. Remember Newton's first law??? I guess appreciation is the external force required to change a person from his position of rest. We might have become grown ups and people say that ur glorious goals should motivate you enough but the irony is that the goals, glorious they might be, they don't smile even when they look Good.

P.S- Dedicated to all my Teachers and especially to my class XII chemistry teacher who although never gave me Good but looked the best of the lot :-PPP

1625 in the afternoon

It was when i was going for my squash practice that i realised even though i love the game i never feel elated by the mere thought of going for the game. The practice has become a part of my schedule. Amidst all this so called newly acquired, 'on my own' freedom feeling i have had to pay something very dear. I couldn't possibly go to the court with my brain in this 'does my life suck' mode, so i put a brake to my ride, sat beneath a tree and dived into my portable personal pensieve. All memories of my homework doing flushed my mind. The scale and pencil in hand, eye on the time piece, ears aching for the shout o' my mates', brain forming the football strategies and heart already savouring the jubilance of another victory. My favourite question- Maa if i could do my HomeWork later plzzz, followed by her condescending question, and the reason for that is???because Maa its 1630. This was out daily regime and no conversation in those days could lift my spirits more or make me feel better. Smug if we won the game, explanations & reasons, accounting the instances of  'cheating' when we lost it. Fatigued yet contended but dreading the feel to return home after 1900 and recounting every kick and save to Maa while eating excruciatingly slowly the bread with Bournvita milk coz i knew what fate awaits me after that on the study table. And again contemplating about the game for another half hour before Maa comes to have a peep in.

Gradually the habit of asking for permission morphed into merely informing her and our conversation got lost in time. Sometimes i still try reconstructing The conversation with my roomie but the condescending tone is missing in his voice.

**dedicated to my Maa

An Afternoon Coffee

There are all kinds of people who go to a coffee shop. The lucky ones are those who go there with an eye candy, the unlucky ones are those who tag along with the lucky ones and finally there are the posh, swanky and aristocratic who go alone and only for the sake of coffee, like me. And this third category is not a cover up for those who r not in the first category and still have enough honour to not be among the ones in the second category. I have always heard, cherished and sometimes even envied the phrase-enjoyed over a cup of coffee. The conversation going well, u remain intrigued only by the talks, the conversation going foul, who cares for the damn coffee.

I am a big fan of coffee and it really pains me when, forget about the lucky ones even my 'unlucky' friends do not know how to drink coffee. I mean what other things have they to do in a coffee shop if not the coffee. As far as i am concerned i enjoy the coffee without sugar, the sugar alters the taste of the coffee, don't forget to take in and ponder with close eyes on the all important aroma. Start doing this and i m sure coffee will cease being just a something to wake up or may be the thing over which you enjoy your conversations. Drinking coffee is similar to drinking wine, its not just the manufacturer who instill in the taste but u also got to play an equally imp part i.e learn how to drink.

I m not being paid to advertise coffee, no, its just that i wanted to stand in defence of the movie 'Dhobhi Ghaat' which many of my friends have condemned for being boring and unintelligible. Its a matter of perception as i found all the three stories to be blended in the movie very smoothly like the blend of steamed milk, milk froth and coffee in a cappuccino. Watch the movie all alone one afternoon and you can enjoy the tingling feeling, long time after the movie concludes similar to (even The Aamir Khan can't make a coffee substitute) the case of a coffee without sugar, a lingering titillating taste on the tongue.

P.S.- Although of course don't always delve in too much for the taste otherwise you will definitely hurt your chances of finding yourself lucky again.

**dedicated to all my friends especially Bharat Kumar, the man who given a chance will choose coffee over women.

Mining for Gold

Unity in diversity has become a thing of past out here. May i have your phone number, will u come for coffee, shall i walk you to hostel, common lets celebrate your birthday, is it alright if i txt to inform you when, where and how i'm gonna pee or jerk, Can we have a relationship??? The answer is always the same, unified- Are u Nuts??? I wish i had answered it yes, but alas i was a kid back then who had two left feet(I CAN’T DANCE) so i didn’t know the perfect answer and hence always denied of me as a nut. It is widely appreciated that gals out here don’t go for looks, physique or talent, otherwise they would have come to us instead of their desperate search for nuts. But it was not their fault, no. The problem was on our part, we always let our lust come on the surface(nutty ppl don't show their EMOTIONS), the basic condition which made us unfit for the most popular brand of friends for gals, the JUST brand. I dunno why almost all boys hate being JUST friends when there is a plethora of silver linings in it-

• pocket friendly- you can go to what is every boy's second best date, the shared date though you'll have to compromise your privacy with others and also others won't stop hitting on your JUST friends afterall you all are JUST friends.
• freedom- there's no compulsion for you to call back or msg back immediately anddd you can flirt with others openly too as your JUST friends are suppose to help you out in this lusty feat of yours.
• if you are NOT PERVERT- JUST friends are allowed to have their hands held and occasionally put around shoulders(only :-P) and waist, well these physical tremors does help keep you wanted and dancing.

So next time folks if you DOn't want to be labelled as a nut, keep your eyes six inches above to where they are now while you talk to a girl(try to look into her eyes and not into...sicko). Gals don't have their eyes in the back, have your chance to size up them then, like they(???) do and most imp envy won't take you anywhere so LEARN from others.

**dedicated to all my friends who don't want being APPLIED to nuts :-PPP